1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to improvements in rotary piston engines or motors powered by internal combustion procedures.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The evolution of modern internal combustion powered engines and motors is well known. The commencement thereof is many years past and the improvements upon original pioneering concepts and implementations has been constantly continuing since their inception.
A great proportion of, and a most significant thrust in, these developments has been towards engine adaptation of the conventional piston type with powering expansion by fuel combustion of an energizing medium suitable for the purpose of providing an explosive force to drive the movable piston within a plane of reciprocation, wherein an eccentric mechanism, such as a crankshaft, is furnished and so adapted as to be capable of converting reciprocating force and energy into rotary motive power of one or another sort.
Efforts have been made to make internal combustion engines and motors of a rotary configuration because of a perceived maximization of efficiencies with respect to function, performance and fuel consumption.
In all of this, it has indeed been observed and recognized that insofar as concerns the obtention of maximized work output efficiency in a so-called four stroke cycle there is continued need for compression patterns in gas engines and the like according to the now old expressions that Beau de Rochas first expressed in 1864. These classical rules of thumb are still appropriately applicable in presett day engines of various sorts, including the rotary type, and set forth clearly that: (i) there should be a maximum of cylinder volume per unit of cylinder surface; (ii) expansion should occur with maximum rapidity; (iii) there should be a maximum ratio of expansion; and (iv) there should be a maximum initial pressure.
In any event, many of the contemplated as well as actually employed rotary style engines did not prove successful nor find much practicality or applicability for actual use and installation.
Indicative and rather typical of the more-or-less impractical early types of rotary engines are those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 937,298 granted Oct. 19, 1909 to one A. Finch for a "REVERSIBLE GAS OR OIL ENGINE"; U.S. Pat. No. 1,272,728 granted July 18, 1918, to W. J. Tower for a "ROTARY ENGINE"; U.S. Pat. No. 1,286,900 granted Dec. 10, 1918, to A. C. Ashcraft for "ROTARY ENGINE"; and U.S. Pat. No. 1,319,932 granted Oct. 28, 1919, to S. B. Stevenson for a "ROTARY ENGINE - EXPLOSIVE TYPE." These engines and even envisagable modifications thereof within the limits of the specified disclosures in which they are to be found are truly relatively primitive and crude devices by today's standards, especially as regards meeting modern needs and requirements; and are, therefore, totally unsuited to and unacceptable for vehicular and other possible usages.
More recent endeavors to provide efficient and useful types of rotary engines for modern needs and applications have been spurred on and accelerated by the desires and necessities to conserve fuels and energization media, especially those of hydrocarbon and petroleum origin.
Notwithstanding, rotary engines of the type shown in British Patent No. 838,166 dated June 22, 1960, for improvements in or relating to "ROTARY INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES" and in British Patent No. 910,417 granted Nov. 14, 1962, for "INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES", have failed to overcome or really cure the deficiencies and inadequacies of earlier style rotary engines. On the other hand, some of those, such as the versions of E. T. Miller brought forth in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,852,001 issued Dec. 3, 1974, for a "FLUID TRANSLATOR", are likely adaptable for use with such pressurized fluids as steam, despite being unsuited for adaptation with combustible fuel materials, such as gasoline.
Also, rotary engines of the type taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,084 issued Apr. 29, 1980, to K. Alexeev, et al., are conceivably operable with combustible fuel supplies but are seriously hindered and rendered awkward and overly complex by their requirement to have numerous moving parts, cams, seals, etc., tending to hamper manufacture and easy maintenance for good operability and, also, regardless of condition, to also reduce efficiency and balance in and of the involved unit.
Nothing heretofore, however, appears to realistically concern itself with nor teach an effective, efficient, extremely reliable and exceptionally economic apparatus assembly which is well-adapted for manufacture and admirably endowed for usage with utmost satisfaction in order to furnish a most propitious rotary piston engine drivable with a variety of fuels for power motivation of the involved apparatus in the way so crucially indigenous as are present and innately associable in and with the present invention.